This is the first book to compare the distinctive welfare states of Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman trace the historical origins of social policy in these regions to crucial political changes in the mid-twentieth century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization.

After World War II, communist regimes in Eastern Europe adopted wide-ranging socialist entitlements while conservative dictatorships in East Asia sharply limited social security but invested in education. In Latin America, where welfare systems were instituted earlier, unequal social-security systems favored formal sector workers and the middle class.

Haggard and Kaufman compare the different welfare paths of the countries in these regions following democratization and the move toward more open economies. Although these transformations generated pressure to reform existing welfare systems, economic performance and welfare legacies exerted a more profound influence. The authors show how exclusionary welfare systems and economic crisis in Latin America created incentives to adopt liberal social-policy reforms, while social entitlements from the communist era limited the scope of liberal reforms in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. In East Asia, high growth and permissive fiscal conditions provided opportunities to broaden social entitlements in the new democracies.

This book highlights the importance of placing the contemporary effects of democratization and globalization into a broader historical context.

Review:

"In this new work, the authors make another major contribution to the field of comparative political economy by examining in a thorough manner the various factors that influence the different trajectories of social policy (primarily the development and reform of welfare policies) in middle-income countries of Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. . . . This will be an important and widely cited work in the field."--Choice

"The in-depth comparative investigation into the welfare states in developing and former-communist countries provided in Development, Democracy, and Welfare States is unprecedented. This book will likely be the point of departure for most future work on welfare states in any of these regions. . . . The conclusion of the book, in addition to presenting the significant findings of this initial investigation, could be read as a research agenda for students of welfare-state (re)formation in Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe."--Kristin Nickel Makszin, Czech Sociological Review

"[T]he first of its kind and one that opens new paths. . . . The main strength of the book is . . . its very articulate comparative historical analysis covering a range of policy issues and countries. The book is already a must-read and excellent contribution to the field."--Emre Uckardesler, International Review of Modern Sociology

"Development, Democracy, and Welfare States transforms the comparative study of welfare states or regimes outside of the advanced industrial countries. . . . [I]t goes much further than its predecessors in integrating a detailed and original analysis of cross-national statistical data into an excellent synthesis of existing literature. . . . Development, Democracy, and Welfare States makes an enormous contribution to the field of comparative political economy."--Jeremy Seekings, Perspectives on Politics